Now, go on, and explain away as hard as you like.' Alaric, under these circumstances, found it not very easy to put what he had to say into any words that his companion would admit.
He fully intended at some future day to thrust Scott's innocence down his throat, and tell him that he was not only a thief, but a mean, lying, beggarly thief.

But the present was not the time.
Too much depended on his inducing Undy to act with him.
'Ten thousand pounds has at any rate been taken.' 'That I won't deny.' 'And half that sum has been lent to you.' 'I acknowledge a debt of L5,000.' 'It is imperative that L10,000 should at once be repaid.' 'I have no objection in life.' 'I can sell my shares in the Limehouse bridge,' continued Alaric, 'for L6,000, and I am prepared to do so.' 'The more fool you,' said Undy,' if you do it; especially as L6,000 won't pay L10,000, and as the same property, if overheld another month or two, in all probability will do so.' 'I am ready to sacrifice that and more than that,' said Alaric.
'If you will sell out L4,000, and let me at once have that amount, so as to make up the full sum I owe, I will make you a free present of the remainder of the debt.

Come, Undy, you cannot but call that a good thing.

You will have pocketed two thousand pounds, according to the present market value of the shares, and that without the slightest risk.' Undy for a while seemed staggered by the offer.

Whether it was Alaric's extreme simplicity in making it, or his own good luck in receiving it, or whether by any possible chance some all but dormant remnant of feeling within his heart was touched, we will not pretend to say.